Several days in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Cholula

I stopped taking a daily blog entry of each of my days in Mexico as I wanted to be free to enjoy at leisure my time over the Christmas and New Year period, but as a few things have happened I want to write them down before I forget, so this entry is a mish mash of days events thrown togeter in no particular chronological order. Also I am doing this from a friends computer so I have no photos to add here yet, but when I get back to my laptop I will try to slip a few in.

I spent a few days in Cuernavaca, a sleepy little Mexican town which my friend K´s family is building their own house from the ground up over a numbe of years. It is a nice open planned house which will probably end up being having three levels as well as parking space for about three cars.

The house in Cuernavaca has a great view of the surrounding countryside which I am told is lush and green with an intensity I cannot imagine in the spring, after the rains come and it all florishes to life.

The area also has a number of large spiders, snakes ( non poisonous ), mosquitos and scorpions, which I had the fortune to see first hand scuttle across the bathroom floor during the night. They are not as deadly as the media points out, Ks father has been bitten twice in his life by them and survived, and they keep anti sickness pills which counteract the poison in the house at all times so that there is no real emergency to even rush the bite victim to the hospital.

K also took me to a ancient aztec spa called a Temescal, which is like a ceremonial steam bathroom where you chant, sweat, drink tea and beat yourself and each other with leaves til you are ready to leave through a tiny exit but not before being reborn and washed free from your sins and past life. It was an amazing experience and one that K assured me would be in few if any tour books about Mexico, it being more spiritual than touristy and thus would be a great addition to my blog.

Sitting in a covered clay walled room you wear as little as you feel confortable in, drink herbal tea while a head magicman, kind of like a shaman but without any fancy clother or jewellry, sits and conducts the session. The heat slowly builds thanks to a wall furnace and lots of water, til you are sweating from every pour and even lying flat on the ground offers little protection from the humid climate inside the hut, and you tea is necessary to replenish your body liquids as you pray and thank the four winds and elements for the life you have been given.

At the end you are drenched by cold water, which in the humid condition feels ice cold, and many people scream, cry or laugh as the water is poured over their head. My turn made me laugh as despite watching it happen to the others and saying when I wanted it, I was still in mid breath when the waters came and the sudden rush of cold water over my face just made me almost choke and laugh at the same time.

K loves the experience and if she had the time and money is something that she would do on a daily or weekly basis, but its location means that its a little too far to visit and so it has become sort of a once a month spiritual treat for her, rejuvinating and clensing her mind and body

As a group we also visited the cinema to watch the new movie Australia, which was great and had excellent acting, special effects, a believable script and wonderful music and it had up all about to cry a few times before the final curtain came down.

When it was time to leave Cuernavaca I said goodbye to her family and thanked them for a wonderful time, their hospitality was very kind and generous and as they refused any money for food or lodgings the whole time I was there I really felt that despite the language obstacle with her parents that I got on well with the whole family.

Whoever said that Mexicans are not friendly or hospitable either had terribly bad luck or have probably never taken the time to try and understand or befriend them as certainly I have felt more welcome and at home here than in any other country since leaving the UK.

From here I took a two hour bus, only 155 pesos, to meet up with her sister who lives in the small town of Cholula near Puebla, which not many people know of but historians should as Cholula has a long history with influence from the original settlers, the Olmecs, the Toltecs, the Aztecs and finally the Spanish and indeed houses the worlds largest base pyramid in the world.

( For reference, the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually taller as it was built with very steep sides, whereas the Pyramid of Cholula was larger as it had a much larger base area however the sides were sloped much shallower thus it was not as heigh, and also built like all the American pyramids, its construction was small managable sized bricks of rock and stone. )

The reason why more people do not know of it, I believe, is that even before the Spanish destroyed much of the surrounding temples the pyramid itself had long since become covered over and hidden from site, only in the 1930s was it properly recognised and restoration started process started.

Currently only one side is partly uncovered, as indeed a great Spanish Church has been built over the top of it, as the grasy hill hid its former glory, and also an insane asylum is also built at its base in the 1910s before the pyramid was rediscovered.

Covering 25 acres, the pyramid had a final height of 181 feet, each side being 1300 feet wide, and so far archaeologists have unearthed over 5 miles of tunnels in the complex.

Ks sister has a great little house that is located so close to the pyramid that you can see the church at the top from the end of her road, and so we will be going there soon.

Her and her boyfriend, also took me into the town of Cholula and the place may be small but it was full of character, with a local drink that is sweet and potent, a central plaza as pretty and neat as any I have seen and am impressive flea market held during the weekeds where you can find everything from rubber spiders to movie posters of the early 1930s, original star wars figures to cast solid metal irons and those tiny peddal cars that children used to use in the early part of last century.

It was great to see the mix of artwork and handicrafts of every kind imaginable and I was impressed with the stylish belts made of can ringpulls and the handbags made from sweet wrappers, all of which if you did not look closely you could have been fooled into thinking was high end retail goods.

Day four in Mexico City, Mexico

Having arranged to stay in Mexico city for at least another ten days after returning from Cancun, my time here now it at a much more relaxed pace and there is no need for me to be rushing around and taking photos of the slightest things ever few minutes, and instead I can properly relax, enjoy a home cooked breakfast that I can prepare myself and perhaps even take time out to do a little more studying of the Spanish language and of Mexico City itself.

Thus armed with my laptop, a large detailed and informative map of the country I sat down this afternoon after drafting my latest blog updating and just amused myself with learning more about the culture, the people and the history of a country often misunderstood and misadvertised through the media and hollywood movies.

For most of the morning and the early afternoon I read and drafted emails so that by the afternoon I was freed to go to a restaurant where K' had promised me some fish and chips like they serve back home. I think that I had forgot to mention that in Mexico City for around 20 pesos in most of the bigger restaurants you can get them to park your car for you, thus saving you time and running around trying to look for parking spaces in a city with 25 million other people.

Although I was half expecting a fish and chips to be similar to the ones I am used to in the UK, what I experienced was even better, with thinner batter, tastier fish and chips that were closer to twisted fries that potato wedges, very scrummy and really set me up for a great nights entertainment.

After the meal we headed on up to the local cinema where we had planned to watch the latest sci-fi flick 'The Day The Earth Stood Still' in the VIP screen and this place was like no other cinema I had ever been to in my life.

The drive to the cinema should only have been a mere ten minutes but due to the heavy traffic it was more like forty five minutes, which gave us plenty of time to chat in the car on the way, and had it been daytime I could probably have taken a few nice photos while we were sitting still in traffic.

For 70 pesos you get half of a pair of large comfy recliner seats with so much leg room you can't even reach the seat in front of you, a side table that slides over your seat and a downlight so that you can see the table and your drink without ruining the atmosphere of the film. On top of that you get to wait in a nice comfy lounge before the film, order there from a wide selection of snacks and food even Sushi, from one of the waiters who will then bring the food to your seat once you are properly seated.

The film itself was good, made us both think quite a lot, in fact the car ride back was fairly quiet as we were both deep in contemplation and our own thoughts.

Day three in Mexico City, Mexico

I am not if it the late night movies, the heat, the comfort of the sofa bed or the more relaxed and casual timetable I have here in Mexico City, but I have been sleeping longer and doing less in the mornings than in other cities, and as K' had work and I had photos to sort out and blog entries to update, it was around 2pm when we finally decided to leave and take a tour around the city centre and visit the Zocalo and other sites of interest.

However, although it was not exactly a frightening nightmare as such ( and it didn't wake me screaming or sweating ), I did wake during the night somewhat suddenly from a bizarre dream that was disturbing enough for me not to be able to instantly forget it and drift back asleep, and I ended up tossing and turning for at least an hour before I finally managed to make it back asleep.

For a change, we did not drive into town, but instead took the local metro system which I think was not only very cheap ( a single ticket being a mere 2 pesos, which is like 10p ) but it was fast and very efficient and tourist friendly with large simple images above each of the city names so that even if you dont know or cant pronounce the name properly, you can have a good idea of what is there and where you need to go. In fact, the only thing that I didn't like was that as the super slimline train pulled into each station, the driver was a little too inexperienced or in a hurry and kept lurching to a stop instead of a more calm and smooth rest.

At the central station there is a large model of Temple Major which showed what the ancient Indian Mexico City very probably looked like as based on information gathered from other nearby sites, the last remaining ruins still evident in the very city centre and from geological surveys taken from the surrounding area. If the model is in anyway accurate then it was indeed a huge walled city, with as many as six huge central structures or pyramids and dozens of lesser building complexes all artfully decorated in coloured bands of red, yellow and blue.

Being a Monday the actual site of Temple Major itself was closer off to the public, but you could still see some of the edges of the upper most walls through the fencing and it was enough to get a taster and feel of the place, adding weight to the probability that the model below was not far off the truth.

As the ruins were off limits for the day, and K' had no real liking for gonig skating, snow luging or joining in much of the other Christmas frivolities that were being held in the main square, instead I was more than happy to leave behind the fake snow and head off to visit the nearby Palacio Nacional, with its beautiful cactus gardens and three tiered archway inner enclosures.

After going through a security metal scanners and asked for ID ( thankfully K' talked my way through as I had left me passport behind, not having needed it til now ) and the courtyard had a fabulous fountain that in the sunlight was backed by the impressive ornate archways that were an budding architects wet dream.

Sculptures and statues abounded inside and yet it was the many decorative wall paintings / collages that attracted the most attention and indeed where the group of American tourists guide was featuring on mostly. In a series of connecting paintings the entire height of the wall, the artworks showed the history of Mexico City from its original roots, through the invasion by the Spaniards right through to almost modern day where science and industry dominated the final panal.

Next we took a gentle stroll around the centre before arriving at a restaurant that was once a elegant town house, one of the first buildings built in the new Mexico City and still possessig much of its historical quaintness and original fixtures, with complete chandaliers, pillars and ornate wooden picture frames, doorways and stair cases.

The food and the price are not exceptionally good, but all that pales against the wonderful setting and you could imagine that some of the locals might decide to dress up especially for coming to such a place and having a full three course meal before going on to watch a stage show or some other such twilight extravaganza.

With the light beginning to fade we took a walk around the Cathedral, with its beautiful confessional booths, gold leafed pulpits and grandious organs that when played I imagine would drown out all but the most enthusiastic of choirs.

Our final stop before the daylight failed was a walk along to the Palacio de Bellaz Artes, that was an beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. I have never been one for spending hours walking through art galleries and possibly due to my premature awakening this morning, despite it being only around 6pm I could barely suppress my yawnings, so much so that I started K' off and so together we just walked to the nearby metro stop and came home without spending more than a few minutes in the Palacios' main lobby.

Another slightly jarred but fast metro ride back we just grabbed a bite to eat, watched a movie and talked before it was yet again time to make up the sofabed and for me to fall asleep.

In my three days I have enjoyed my time in Mexico City and my time with K' enough so that I decided that there was still so much that I wanted to see and do that I made my first real major diversion of my route around the world and instead of heading on up to Orlando Florida and then across to the Dominican Republic for Christmas, I have decided to return here after visiting Cancun and Chichen Itza, so that I can get to know more a place that thus far never ceases to intrigue or impress me.

This change will also mean that I can spend both Christmas and New Year in a city that is modern, fun, safe and without the need to take several flights and long bus rides at the very peak of the holiday season.

Day two in Mexico City, Mexico

I was a little tired when I woke up this morning, so it was not until around ten or eleven when I crawled out of the sofabed and actually did something constructive with the day.

Many years ago K' father had found a place called Xochitepec where there was an wonderful old style hotel with a grand pool and restaurant that you could use even if you could use even if you were not a guest, and in a setting so beautiful that many is the Mexican who has been there that they have thought about using it as a place to hold their weddings or anniversaries.

Again it was a little far out from the city centre, so we had to drive there, but as before this was only a benefit and not a problem and even if it was longer than just a few minutes the scenery was worth the wait.

The price of the breakfast was not exactly cheap, but then considering if it far out and non guests can use it I feel that this is a good thing as I would hope it would be a little bit more expensive than normal to keep it slightly exclusive and prevent it from being swamped with tourists and passing travellers.

Lovely arched walls and walkways, an authentic horse drawn carriage, large fountain and enough flowers and palmtrees to please even the most demanding nature lover are all carefully spread out over a few acres of land that you can walk around without having to enter the hotel itself, which again leads an extra level of privacy and security to any guests who do decide to stay there, and having been there for a day I could think of few places that had the mix of convenience, history and beauty all wrapped up in such a stylish way.

A open and varied buffet with inclusive drinks was enough to fill me up plenty, and it was a good job too as after here we planned to take another longish car journey to visit K's favorite archaeological site at Xochicalco and both along the road and at the destination there would be few places to stop and eat that I would want to do so.

Arriving there the first glimpse of the structures on the high green mountain top are when you are almost there, as the place is less well known than other sites of interest and has been much less excavated due partly to its hard to reach location and partly due to lack of available funds.

A museum at the entrance is included in the entrance price, which is hardly anything when you consider what it covers, and once you start to look around the site you get a real sense of history and beauty.

The site itself is actually probably one of the largest in the Americas, and although from the low entrance below it looks like just a few squared top pyramids, but once you start to ascend up the hillside and then look back you can see the surrounding hills are actually littered with a myriad of other stuctures stretching far into the distance.

Even a momentary study at the structures that are uncovered reveals that what is on show is far from all that is there, and more time, money and labour a complex twice its size might eventually be unearthed, but the fact that it hasn't and the fact that it is less well known all adds to its mystery and alure. During the few hours that we walked round it I barely saw fifty other tourists and much like Copan, this was of great benefit as I could really be alone with my thoughts and send my mind back in time to how it was when the place was filled with the sounds of an Indian civilization now long since departed.

Again using small stone and rock they erected structures of perhaps a simple design, but they are no less impressive when you consider the size and the care with which it was built, and K' also told me that from space many of the achaeological sites right across Mexico could all be seen to be places along a straight line, which further impressed me as the distance and line of sight between each are not only great but also obstructed by mountains and rivers.

At the time of its creation and original height of power, they locals played a bizarre game called 'Juego de Pelota', the rules are a bit unclear, but apparently it was played right across the Indian world at the time, and involved two teams partially covered in padding, a concrete ball and a large concrete disc held high above a double open ended court with angled walls.

As I understood if from K's explanation, from the relics left over and from the wall mounted display model it appears to be a bit like violent sideways basketball with the overall winner being declared a hero or great worth who is then sacrificed to the gods in recognition of his skills.

I have no idea why anyone would want to play a game where if you won you would be killed, and while I have no idea what happened to the losers, I would privately think that the whole killing the winner part was drempt up a feeble but cunning Indian who used it as a way of eliminating his opposition in terms of romance or political power.

Another part of the site was the observatory, which was nothing more complex than an artificially constructed cavern that was placed in totaly darkness except its single chimney opening directly upward and used to both study the sky but also as a primative xray device, using the bright sunlight to penetrate and observe a persons limb on the smooth flow below.

Having been to the totally darkened cavern in Peru, this place did not phase me and it was funny to see K's reaction as she walked with a sensible degree of hesitation while I was happy strolling along and offering to take photos to light up the way.

The whole place closed to the public sometime around dusk and with it being a couple of hours drive away from the city centre, we decided to drive back and along the way I got to see a wonderful Mexican sunset as we drove along the motorway, passing hills, fields and volcanoes barely visible in the distance.

Day One in Mexico City, Mexico

Before I arrived in Mexico City I had contacted my friend K' and together we agreed that we would visit a few of the major archaeological sites in Mexico. As there are dozens and dozens of different sites worth visiting and my time here is limited, we chose a few of the biggest, most important and best preserved sites to visit.

It was only after I arrived here and we discussed then that I found out that there are almost no actual sites that the Aztecs built that remain intact, but there are plenty of ruins that the Mayan civilization created, a race that was different and earlier than the Aztecs, and who had either died out, migrated or abandoned their mountain strongholds long before the Aztecs conquered much of what is now Mexico and Central America.

Before we headed out to visit our first site, Teotihuacan, we had to swing by K's work place so that I could send a few emails and visit the neighbouring laundrette in order to get my clothes done, as it was far too expensive to get it done in the hotel in San Salvador.

It was really great driving through Mexico City with K' as she is a confident driver, we had the radio blaring out classic 80's songs and with the sun shinging down we flew along the highways and could see the mountains, valleys, corn fields and it felt so confortable and relaxing.

The colours of Mexico are as green as anywhere else you could imagine, and I was pleased and surprised to see small trees, shrubs and flowers planted and lovingly tended to all along the highways, like they were private avenues instead of public highways.

The colour of taxis in Mexico City are green and white and although the modern models are slowly phasing out the older taxis, it was wonderful to see green and white beetles whizzing about the city centre.

Mexico city centre was originally built by the Spaniards right over the top of the original city built by the Aztecs, which they first had to flattened and flood, and this terrible act destroyed almost all of the original structures, however the foundations are still there, underneath the modern buidings.

The only drawback for them, which they could never really have forseen, is that where they did not let the land settle for years first, the land is slowly subsiding and now the modern buildings are in danger of falling down in on themselves. This can be seen is many of the roads and larger buildings where the room centres are lower than the supporting walls.

However, saying that, Mexico City has more modern and properly constructed buildings than most other cities that I have seen in the Americas, as largely it does not feel like a poor or a broken down metropolis at all.

Of course, there are the bad neighbourhoods and regions, but more often than not they are few and far between and much of the city is under constant reconstruction and renovation, with scaffolding and pavements uprooted on many street corners, and the roads themselves are some of the best I have seen outside of Europe.

Outside of the city centre the horizon became even more beautiful than before, with forested hills and white peaked volcanoes rising up in the far distance, until we reached Teotihuacan, a settlement built by Indian people of the same name and here my first experience of the vastness and size of the pyramids that in stone and size dwarfed even the Greta Pyramid of Giza, although using more much more managable sized hewn rock and stone.

An avenue of mini funeral flat roofed pyramids stretched out on both sides, passing by areas of housing and reaching out to the end of the avenue which sat the impressive pyramid of the moon, itself almost in the shadow of its bigger twin pyramid of the sun.

Having already trekked through Central and South America, the heat and humidity was not a problem for me but for slightly overweight American tourists it was another matter, and a few had to pause every tenth step as they climbed up to the top of the Sun Pyramid, before being rewarded by a magnificent view overlooking the valley that stretched for miles in every direction.

As Teotihuacan is almost two hours drive away from the city centre, we could only stay a few hours before it was time to come back, but in all honesty with the flatness of the land itself, the hordes of tourists and the lack of trees or vegetation for shelter I would not really have wanted to stayed there much longer.

On the way back we could see that the sun was almost setting and in the end once we arrived back in the city centre, we found a restaurant that served traditional tacos where I stuffed myself silly eating, as they were so great and I regret not trying them more often back in the UK, although being fare K' explained that they dont travel well and are best found locally.

As the sun was down, there was not much else we could visit that I could take many photos of, so instead we went around an area just outside of the city centre, known for its night life and found that a wedding was in progress in the local church, which meant lots of people dressed up in their finest clothes and the bride arrived in a wonderfully preserved car that would have turned heads even in the 1920's or 30's which is when it was first seen on the roads.

Then we came back, watched a comedy movie and then crashed out for the night.

A morning at the beach, and a day spent flying

I met up with M' around 9:30 as she had agreed to drive me to the airport, as she also had to pick up her cousin who was flying in the same day, but as neither flight was in the morning she said that we would have enough time to take a quick drive to the beach, and she said it would be a crime if I did not visit the beach near San Salvador, at a region called La Liberdad.

The drive through the city to the beach was great, as it gave me a chance to see some of the rich chateaux's and poor slum houses almost next to each other and I was amazed at how close they were to each other, as normally an area is rich but here one street could be rich and the next poor.

As we drove we were chatting and I remembered that this area was where the two German guys were going to visit to do some surfing and after about half an hour we pulled into a side street leading to a hotel that was right on the beach.

I had no idea that a lot of the beach front resorts doubled up as restaurants and private swimming pools, but in turned out that even if you were not a guest staying at the hotel you would order food and drinks from their restaurant and for a mere US $3 you could use the pools.

I am so glad that I had left the rain behind as being yet another gloriously sunny day, I was able to do a tiny bit of lazing in the sun and if only I had known this before then I would have stayed here instead of in the city centre, and with prices of US $57 for a single room the cost was very resonably priced for the good facilties and location.

Looking out over the beach I was gobsmacked at the dark sand and large pebbles and stones that were the beach area, and they were as beautiful as any beach I had seen before, with the palm trees swaying gently in the sea breeze.

Sadly, with the time it took to reach and then return we didn't have much time to stay there and after a nice breakfast it was time to leave and head off to the airport, and I could not thank my M' enough as she had been the best guide she could be, fun, happy and refused to always let me pay for things, despite her not taking any money for the petrol that she was using when we were driving around for the last few days.

The airport itself was pretty small when you compare the size of the city, but it was well modern and the staff knew enough English for it not to be a problem either checking in or finding my way to the gate.

Before I boarded I shared a last banana split with my M' in the airport restaurant and we spend so much time talking that I almost missed my flight, barely passing through security at 1:15pm when my flight was due to depart at 1:25.

The next 9 hours were spend rushing to catch planes, flying and watching crappy airline with tv with more adverts than shows, drinking coffees and only a few hours all in all wasted in airport departure lounges. I was surprised at the speed and smoothness of my connections, all with TACA, and all of them took off and arrived on time which meant the forty minutes between flight times was perfectly enough to go from one arrivals lounge to the next departure gate.

I have never seen such small queues as I did at the Mexico Immigration station and I think I spent less than a minute answering about two quick questions before he stamped my passport and waved me through. Equally good timing was that my holdall luggage had arrived perfectly undamaged despite two flight changes, and it came out number 7 on the luggage carosel ( I like to count to see how many other pieces of luggage are processed before mine, silly but it helps the time go by ) and then I was through to the main terminal.

I phoned up my friend K' who had herself just arrived at the airport and together we went to have a mini tour of the city at night before finding an Irish bar where we grabbed a quick drink before making plans for the next few days and then finding me a place to sleep for the night, as I could not find the paperwork that I had printed out of my hostel.